Given its importance, the goal of reducing beef consumption is surprisingly attainable. And there's a good reason for this. It's the one animal rights issue that depends least on animal welfare rhetoric. Cattle may indeed enjoy miserable lives, but the ill effects of beef consumption extend far beyond the well being of individual cows. Beef consumption also devastates the environment, ruins public health, and even steals grain from the mouths of starving children. But you wouldn't know this from listening to animal rights activists. In their eagerness to promote animal welfare, they've apparently forgotten that equally compelling environmental, health, and moral reasons exist for not eating beef. And, as a result, they've ignored a potential alliance with anyone already socially conscious enough to recycle, watch his diet, or donate to hunger charities. Or, in other words, almost every American.

The animal rights movement may have real and important goals, but as long as human beings continue to suffer, the public will rightly consider the living conditions of cattle a secondary concern. This means the most